Replying to LO28950 --
Dear Organlearners,
Barry Mallis <theorgtrainer@earthlink.net> writes:
>The Russian root "div" does in fact refer to wonder,
>amazement, marvel, astonishment, amazement,
>wonderment, surprise.
(snip)
>However, "divo" has nothing to do with the diva on stage.
>The word "diva" exists in Russian, and means the same
>as the English word: an operatic "standout"
>
>The English word, of course, comes from the Italian,
>literally goddess, from Latin, the feminine form of "divus,"
>god.
>
>So, there's no 'hence' here. the words are quite distinct
>etween Russian and English, for instance.
Greetings dear Barry,
Thank you for this correction. It is in the best interest of fellow
learners that a false connection does not get propagated unheeded.
Perhaps I may give an explanation why I connected "diva"/"divus" to
wonder, even wrongly so. One of the strange words in the Germanic
languages is devil (Teufel-German, Duivel-Dutch). I mean with the
"strange" that there are no other closely related words (except its
derivations by perfixes and suffixes) to help pointing to the etymology of
this word. The old Anglo-Saxon word for devil was "deoful". From this it
is usually infered that the root "deo" comes from the Latin "deo" or the
Greek "theos".
But my studies into the origin of religions took me much further back than
Latin and Greek religions. The earliest records on religion are those on
Semiramus of Nineve (Mesopotania) who misused religion to retain the
benefits of an empire built by her husband Nimrod. The priests
administering her religion had to keep to some rigid, clever rules. One
was that an initiation ritual was necessary to share the benefits of
religion. Another one was the religion had mysteries which required the
priests and only them for illumination. But the following one has bearing
on this topic -- the wonder of each idol had to be worshipped
ceremonially.
It is this latter rule which made me wonder whether devil is not actually
a remnant of "dhyai"+"ful". We know from descriptions of Herodotus that
the blond wanderers going north-west came from over the Caucasian
mountains, perhaps fleeing from too many "dhyia"+"ful" ;-) However, this
is but my speculation because the Sanskrit word for the Germanic "ful"
(not the Latin "fullare"=clean) is "pur", indicating a proto-Aryan root
"par" for full.
Nevertheless, finding such information on Semiramus made me realise with a
schock how easy it is to pervert any religion, even today. It also made me
realise how easy it is to elevate a necessary, daily activity into a
religion. All it requires is a bunch of easy believing people, blinded by
whatever shines="diw" (proto-Aryan). As Jeremiah once pointed it out so
clearly, persons with a sound faith need to be sceptic too, questioning
even the unquestionable.
Dear Barry, lastly, you have begun your reply with:-
>Dear At,
>
>You shared fascinating word connections, about
>which I have always been interested:
I share your feeling. Furthermore, such historical inquiries into the
history of language (words) or other important facets of the human
condition like believing, hoping or loving have helped me to get a better
understanding how evolution proceeded for humankind itself and not merely
evolution in nature. I am convinced that such understanding will help us
to get a better grip on our short term developments. We are not a tiny
float on a wide ocean which spans the globe, but an integral part of the
swell of that ocean.
The year 2002 brought me a new worry -- the many people who I meet and who
consider their daily existence as a mere fisherman's float going up and
down, up and down, up and down, .....until pulled down into the dark
depths of dispair by a scheming fellow human. Last week I had a dialogue
with a young psychiatrist, drinking coffee until my ears sang, about this
phenomenon. He had been experiencing the same encounters with patients
since the beginning of 2002. I wonder whether any of you fellow learners
are experiencing the same?
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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